Global warming has quickly become one of the most heated issues in America (pun intended). Rising temperatures and melting icebergs are indisputable evidence that the Earth is warming, but is this global heat wave a man-made crisis or just overblown hype?
Our climate is changing much more quickly than people ever predicted.
Levels of CO2 in our atmosphere have risen well beyond pre-industrial levels, and are rising at rates that surprise scientists. This is causing weather to change more quickly, and for glaciers to disappear more rapidly, than ever thought possible.
For instance, the north polar ice cap could be gone in the summer in as little as five years. This is much sooner than scientists predicted. But it’s typical of the effects we’re now seeing from climate change. They’re developing more quickly, and are more severe, than we ever thought possible.
Earlier this year, you may have read about Chinook salmon populations collapsing in the Pacific Northwest. Some predict that we risk the extinction of 20-30% of the plant and animal species by the end of this century.
You may also have read about an ice shelf nearly four times the size of Manhattan collapsing off the Wilkins Ice Shelf, the largest on the Antarctic Peninsula, in late March. According to the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center, the western Antarctic peninsula has undergone the biggest temperature increase on Earth in the last 50 years. It has risen .9 degree Fahrenheit, or .5 degree Celsius, in each of the past five decades.
We’re not just talking about places far away, either. Think about what more flooding, more droughts, stronger storms, more sever heats waves, and sea level rise would do a place like New York City, London and Tokyo. It would be devastating.
All of these examples send a clear, urgent message.
We are in an extremely precarious situation. We need a change of course. And we need one now.
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